Illustration of the ancient shark named Maghriboselache mohamezanei Christian Klug
A 365-million-year-old shark could swim fast, hunt efficiently and even smell in stereo.
Similar to modern-day hammerhead sharks, the ancient fish had a wide snout and broadly spaced nostrils, allowing for more precise localisation of prey. The discovery of fossils of the animal in the Moroccan Sahara represents the earliest evidence of such sensory specialisation in sharks and other cartilaginous fish – and possibly in all jawed fish, says Christian Klug at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
The evolutionary history of cartilaginous fish has been notoriously hard to piece together,…
